Archive for May, 2009

Useful hosted tools that will save you time “or life”

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

We are the victims of rush, sometimes we forget details and at the last moment we are looking for a solution we fret. Of course, the only specification you require is internet and a desktop computer or laptop.

Let’s take an example

You are at your friend’s house revising documents to hand over soon in college. You realize there are quite lots of typos and your friend don’t have Microsoft Word in his/her computer which makes the situation worst.

That little example is a bit common, then again hard to expect since a lot of people have Microsoft word installed. That aside let’s start naming services

tf-logo

It’s one of my favorites; you have the whole suit of word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program and a notes program. Just a personal thought, ThinkFree is far better and rich than Google Docs and while it takes time to load, it’d be worth it. Truth is Google Docs, if I’m not mistaken, is written in Javascript methinks.

Usage:

ThinkFree allows you to upload Microsoft Word 2007, 2003-’97 documents, also allows you to upload powerpoint files. You can create, edit, download, upload, share files instantly.

Thinkfree Control Panel Editing Documents using ThinkFree

Google DocsGoogle Docs is good for quick edits and collaborative work. Perfectly lightweight and won’t take long to load. Google Docs will handle PowerPoint, Excel, Word files and you can create, edit, delete, share, and invite others to work on your documents.

CodeRun

CodeRun is an IDE written in Javascript, it has the same feel and look of Visual Studio and provides basic tools for developers, such like debugging, running the application and so on. What’s amazing is that you can run ASP.NET applications, AJAX and PHP. What’s disappointing is the performance, it’s still a bit sloppy to work on, yet I feel like it’s going to be quite a powerful tool in the future. Collaborative coding made easy? Perhaps

Usage:

I got to be honest, for a developer to use CodeRun it is quite hard, we are better off with IDEs like NetBeans, Eclipse, phpDesigner, Zend Studio, etc. Give it a try first!

CodeRun Image 1 CodeRun Image 2
CodeRun Image 3 CodeRun Image 4

PXtoEMs – Pixels to Em is a tool that will help you convert an absolute measure to relative. It’s quite useful and pretty easy to pick up. Now if only there was a FireFox plugin of the site then it’d be a knock out.

Usage:

I think it’s pretty self-explanatory what this tool can make.

Color Scheme Designer

Color Scheme Designer is perfect to those who want to try out different colors. CSD features a preview of a site with the color scheme you has selected. Sometimes the output might be a tad undesired but for me the purpose of this tool is to help you choose a combination of colors for your site. Note that later on, after you choose the colors you may use any HTML structure for your site.

picnik-logo

Picnik Allows to Edit your photos online, picnik creates a useful interface to edit your photos. You can crop em, resize and many basic edits to the photos. Provides more than MS Paint, of course I haven’t seen something with less features than MS Paint, would be really shocking.

Here I concluded the list of my handy sites. If there are any I didn’t list which you believe it’s useful, share away! I’d hope this post helps you tons :)

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Hola y Bienvenidos

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

Silly me, it took me around 30 minutes to think of my first post entry, the titles says “Hello and Welcome!” to anyone wondering, its Spanish. First of all welcome to my personal blog where I’m hoping to share with you all with great tips, insights, tutorials and of course personal posts. My name is David González and I’ve been around the internet for quite a long time. I live in Puerto Rico. I’m a freelancer and web developer mainly in the “art of php”, css, mysql and html (and a few others but you can see later on my about page).

Sadly, I don’t expect myself to be perfect in any language (in both programming, and idiom). So if there is a bad practice or a common error, mention it so I get it right!

About this site

This site has been built using BluePrint CSS Framework, WordPress and GIMP. The theme was made using the GIMP and a few brushes. The plug-ins I’m using is Twitter Tools, WP-Page Navi, Akismet(Hello spammers!), Tweetmeme, Add-To-Any and WP Likes at the moment.

The design is still new, it might have a few quirks here and there so if you see any, feel free to comment it here.

A little bit more about myself

I administrate Gimper.net community, a sister site of Gimp-Tutorials.net. My job is to maintain order, drive spammers nuts, manage all kind of updates and new features on the board. Due to the nature of my position and for many programmers out there, it’s hard for me to achieve a decent graphic skill. I often just go with imageless designs; in fact this design itself does not contain many images. I, of course prefer plain html and css, throw some colors and make everything look well… tight and neat.

Besides that, I also worked on IceBB but to my shame those were the years I lacked motivation to contribute in the project, it’s now a project whose wings has been cut, some day it will be revived and get the proper attention it should have received. IceBB actually opened many new doors for me as I researched on my own. Finally, I need to properly thank James, the main developer of IceBB, for guiding me in PHP; today what I know is thanks to him.

A little more! Scratch the internet stuff though!

Eek! Well, I’m making my way into Computer Science and I love playing tennis in Wii and thinking of picking it up in real life. I don’t really go out that much although I’m pretty much an amateur in taking photos and I also enjoy spending time cooking on the kitchen. Ah yes! I love books, mostly fantasy/sci-fi, absolutely, although I’m taking a bit of drama but it’s not really in my taste.

Keep coming

Phew! Sorry to have bored you in this extensive entry about me and my past work. I’d hope you look forward my future posts. If you don’t want to visit the site, that’s okay, you can still subscribe in the RSS feed.

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